You might think that we already know all there is to know about Jackson Pollock’s life and work, but you’d be wrong. For example, before Pollock’s 1943 mural arrived at Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles, it had acquired a coating of varnish, as well as a heavy overlay of myth, both of which made it difficult to see the painting properly. Now, after more than 18 months of analysis and treatment, it has emerged from under its literal and figurative shrouds.

Anyone who doubts Pollock’s compositional and technical skills should study this canvas — at 8 x 20 feet, the largest he ever painted — on view at the Getty Center through June 1, after which it will travel. A tour de force of vibrant brushwork (this was before his signature pouring technique was fully developed), dynamic abstract rhythms and vivid colors, it signals his breakthrough after years of struggling to find his own direction. Like his hero, the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, and his teacher, Thomas Hart Benton, Pollock wanted to paint big, bold pictures that could fill a room with energy. Thanks to his patron, Peggy Guggenheim, who commissioned the mural for the entrance hall of her Manhattan duplex, he was able to realize his ambition.

Pollock was unknown in 1943, and Peggy took a big risk in promoting him. His drinking problem and emotional fragility were red flags, but a talent that MoMA’s curator, James Johnson Sweeney, described as “volcanic” was also obvious. In addition to the mural commission, Peggy signed him up for solo shows at her avant-garde gallery, Art of This Century, and gave him financial support. She bet on his potential, and was rewarded with the credit for launching his career, as well as a superb collection of his paintings. When she moved to Italy after World War II she gave several of them to museums around the country, from Rhode Island to Seattle, and took the rest with her.

But the mural — which was made to be portable, since she was only renting the town house — was too big for her Venetian villa, and finding a home for it proved to be a challenge. There were no takers among the New York museums. Fortunately for the University of Iowa, the head of the art department learned that it was available and got it for the school. For years it hung in the art studio, but when the UI Museum of Art opened in 1969 it became the new building’s centerpiece.

Meanwhile the legend surrounding the mural grew and flourished. The story goes that after procrastinating for months, Pollock painted it in one furious burst of pent-up creative energy. He missed the deadline, so it wasn’t delivered until January 1944, two months after it was due. It was too big for the hallway, so Marcel Duchamp cut eight inches off one end. Turns out none of this is true. Doubts began to arise when the painting was shown at MoMA in Pollock’s 1998 retrospective, and it got its first major examination by conservators. There’s no evidence that it was cut down, and it certainly wasn’t painted in a single night.

The Conservation Institute’s painstaking analysis, discussed and illustrated on the Getty Center Web site, confirms that each layer of oil paint had to dry before the next one was applied, a process that takes days, if not weeks. Plus the finished painting needed drying time before it was unstretched and rolled, the only way to get it out Pollock’s studio door and into Peggy’s hallway. And a recently discovered letter from Peggy says it was in place by early November 1943, right on schedule. So much for the image of an irresponsible, impulsive artist splashing it out in a panic.

Looking at it now, without the 1973 varnish that dulled and flattened its surface, and cleverly re-stretched to disguise a slight sag caused by years on an inadequate support, it’s obvious that the mural is a thoughtfully conceived, methodically executed masterpiece. In addition to restoring its aesthetic glory, the Getty has done it a great service by unpacking its phony baggage.

Photo: Jackson Pollock’s mural at the Getty Center. For more information, go to getty.edu/art/exhibitions/pollock/. Photograph by Roy Nicholson.

To say Lubov Azria is one busy woman would be an understatement. Along with her husband Max, the Ukrainian-born maven runs a small empire, shaping each season’s look for brands under the BCBGMAXAZRIAGROUP umbrella every stylish Hamptonite knows well – from the signature BCBG to the upscale BCBG Runway – as well as Hervé Léger, the high-fashion line best known for its iconic, body-conscious bandage dresses.? All of this means new creative challenges and a packed schedule that takes Azria on the road frequently, both to seek inspiration and to meet with those who run the brands’ various boutiques. As the spring collections are hitting the shelves of BCBG’s East Hampton shop (one of the 530 boutiques worldwide stocking 150 new pieces each month) Lubov fills us in on what’s in store for BCBG this season.

How would you describe the BCBG girl?

We have four types of women who we design for in the BCBG category. One of them is called “connoisseur,” a working mom who needs clothes that are practical and beautiful and she wants to stand out. The second customer is “socialite,” she really doesn’t have a job, or if she does it’s more social, so she loves dresses and standing out in a crowd and everything is dressed up. The third type of customer is called “visionary,” and this is someone who works in the industry and who truly loves fashion. She loves details, special cuts, and things like this. The fourth one is “urban rock,” the rock and roll girl. So when we design for BCBG we make sure there’s something for all four girls in the line. But the BCBG woman, she’s practical, she’s on the forefront of fashion, she knows what she wants, and she’s us!

What can we expect to see from BCBG this spring?

You’ll see a play on proportions and tailoring, and a juxtaposition of the old with the new. For Hervé Léger, we were really inspired by global influences and functional modernism. We’ve introduced easy layering separates and new dimensions of stitching and patterns.

What’s appealing to you about getting out to the area stores when you’re in town?

You connect with your clients and customers. You have to have the same beliefs and values as your customers. That’s how they become your loyal customers. That’s true of your staff as well. We’re passionate people, who are here to inspire other passionate people. Fashion is something amazing – we make a woman look and feel beautiful, period. That’s what we do.

When you’re in the Hamptons how much are you actually working?

It depends. If I’m here for a week, I’ll work, let’s say, 40 percent of the time – or if I’m here for two weeks, maybe 30 percent of the time. I try to relax here as much as I can.

Having spent time here, is there a particular Hampton style?

I think one of the things I love in the Hamptons about the women whom I’m friends with is that they’re so international and so cosmopolitan, and they inspire me. The fascinating thing is that the merchandise we put out is basically the same throughout all of our stores. Yet each area interprets them differently. Out in the Hamptons, women totally let go of what’s expected. It’s amazing. They’re sexier; they have more joie de vivre and live their lives to the fullest. It’s the weather and being together with friends and family. When you’re here, you immediately feel like you’re on vacation. You want to relax and celebrate and dress up.

It’s friggin’ ridiculously cold outside and I’m very much over it. Which is why those seed racks that are suddenly appearing everywhere I look are even more tempting than normal.

Let’s be honest, I already have a ridiculous number of seeds to plant this year, some arrived via dangerous late night sessions on the internet, others are last year’s leftovers, and a bunch were freebies from Renee’s Seeds because I write about gardens. (Last year they sent me Arugla Wasabi that has to be, hands down, the most amazing thing ever – true, bright, sharp wasabi taste in a salad leaf. I adored it.)

So I really don’t need to be shopping those seed racks at all, but I am pulled to their packages like a sugar junkie faced with a box of Cinnabuns. I am helpless. And I know I’m not alone.

Where I feel a little more alone is in the whole hybrid, heirloom debate as I readily confess that I have both kinds of seeds in the enormous pile hidden behind my computer waiting for the kitchen garden soil to warm.

First let’s just clear things up, there is no way that you and I can get our hands on GMO (genetically modified organism) seeds. Hybrids are not GMO seeds. GMO seeds have been built using technology that splice genes and combine species that aren’t intended by nature to go together. Frog genes in tomatoes for cold tolerance and pesticide resistance in soybeans and corn are examples of genetically modified organisms.

So our debate is between hybrid and heirloom seeds.

A hybrid is a seed that has been bred by farmers or scientists to create a better (the definition of better is an interesting thing which we’ll come to in a second) plant. This is where two eggplants are bred together to create a third eggplant that is, again, “better” than its parents. It is a controlled method of pollination and is deliberately done to breed a specific trait.

Heirloom seeds are old seeds. Meant to be at least 100 years old, most are found to have been in existence just before the 1940’s. In addition, heirlooms are reproduced by open pollination (by wind, insect, bird, human or other natural mechanism) and are true plants in that their offspring are almost identical to their parents. If you save seeds from your heirloom tomato and plant them out the following year, all your new plants will be extraordinarily similar to your original plant. If you did the same thing with a hybrid tomato, either the seeds would be sterile, or all the offspring would be radically different from the plant you grew the previous year. To get the same hybrid plant each year, you have to buy more seeds from the seed companies. So obviously seed companies prefer hybrids, as they are significantly more profitable. Once you have one heirloom tomato, you never need to buy tomato seeds again.

So let’s define ‘better’ hybrid. Well my definition is going to be different than that of the scientist that created the evil tasteless tomato I get in the supermarket from commercial farmers. I don’t care about ‘better’ when the tomato gives up taste for longer shelf life, and more uniformity or size. But I do care about ‘better’ when the tomato I’m growing is more resistant to late blight. And heirlooms, although they taste very good, tend not to be resistant to most common diseases. (Of course there’s always the exception, two years ago a local farmer had all his tomatoes totally wiped out by blight, both hybrids and heirlooms, with the sole survivor that season being an heirloom named Pineapple.)

So here’s my problem.

I want the best of both worlds.

I love heirloom seeds. I love the idea of seeds that we can use to become self-sufficient. I embrace entirely the wresting of control of our nation’s seeds’ genetic banks out from corporate America and back into the hands of those who are actually eating the end product. I love keeping classic good things available, and knowing the newer isn’t necessarily better. But I want my Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes. They are most definitely hybrids, and they are most definitely delicious.

Hard core heirloom supporters would deny me my Sun Golds. The Baker Creek Catalog (which only sells heirloom seeds) says that their customers don’t want hybridization in their seeds, well how do they think their heirlooms were created? By the wind?

All those beautiful heirloom tomatoes everyone is fawning over were not created by the wind or by bees, they were created by farmers crossing plants, they were taking the best genes from one plant and combining it with another plant to create a third plant that has the best traits of the first two plants. They were hybridized. The man who created Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter, was a tomato lover who kept crossing and improving various plants until he created one that produced such big, beautiful, delicious red orbs that he was able to sell enough seedlings to pay off his mortgage.

The first seedlings he got from his first cross were not true plants, but he kept crossing and recrossing and recrossing his plants until the hybrid was stable. So if I want to start a big argument with the pure heirloom proponents, I might remind them that all their plants were, at one point, hybrids too.

Now granted this does not mean I’m a fan of companies that patent seeds and sue farmers who try and save seeds from the plants they’ve grown. That’s just one more example of how this planet we live on has gotten out of control. And no I’m not saying that hybrids are better than heirlooms, any more that I’m advocating tossing away heirloom seeds.

Look, I adore tomatoes. And I adore them for the way they taste, not for how they look or how they ship, and most heirlooms taste amazing. But some of them have only 3 or 4 tomatoes on a plant. Or the wet springs take them down with fusarium wilt. Is it wrong of me to want a tomato to taste amazing and yet to still be able to grow it with ease?

I am glad heirlooms with their incredible taste have been saved and that their gene pool has not been lost, and I’m glad someone created the Sungold Cherry tomato, but what I’m most excited about is that we have decided that we want food to taste good, as opposed to being convenient. That we will pay more and work a little harder to find food that’s delicious and healthy and fresh. And that’s why I’m off to peruse the seed rack. There just might be something else delicious on it.

Andy Warhol Taking a Photo in Front of Village Voice Office, Sheridan Square, September 9, 1968

By Helen A. Harrison

“I was a groupie at heart,” Fred W. McDarrah confessed, “and my camera was my ticket of admission.” It was also his meal ticket. As The Village Voice’s picture editor, and for a long time the only staff photographer, Fred (who died in 2007 at 81) made his living documenting the downtown scene for more than four decades. The result is a huge body of work, estimated at some 35,000 images, from which a sampling is on view through March 8 at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea. While it’s a small percentage of Fred’s total output, there are over 100 photos, many of which will be familiar to readers of his books on Greenwich Village, the art world, the gay pride movement, and the Beat Generation. In fact the exhibition’s title, “Save the Village,” is drawn from a cover photo on his 1963 paperback, Greenwich Village, showing the demolition of the sculptor Arnold Bergier’s studio, which had those words painted on its façade. Fifty-four years ago, when that building was torn down, the locals were already mourning the imminent demise of their historic neighborhoods, cheap lofts and far-out life styles.

Fred, a Brooklyn boy, migrated to Manhattan after his Army service and studied journalism on the GI Bill at NYU, when Washington Square was, in his words, “the focus of intellectual and cultural activity.” After graduating in 1954, he snagged a job as an ad salesman for the fledgling Voice, and soon became its photographer-in-residence. Starting with the beatniks, he chronicled the evolution of New York’s bohemia, as well as its surrounding milieu. He hit the street just as the counterculture was warming up the Cold War climate, and the alternative press was providing a forum for innovations in art, theater, music, writing and film. For those of us who came of age in the city during those years, Fred’s images are like the pictures in a family album. For those who weren’t there (or were and can’t remember), they conjure a time when, quoting Fred again, “painting, poetry, avant-garde performances and Off-Broadway theater were in full swing — everybody was creating something.”

The statements I’m quoting were written for an exhibition of Fred’s Greenwich Village photographs at the Pollock-Krasner House in 1990. It was the first show I organized there. When Fred wasn’t prowling the downtown byways, he and his wife Gloria retreated to a cottage on Three Mile Harbor Road, so they were the museum’s not-too-distant neighbors. That was my excuse to prevail on him to share some of his favorite pictures. He was a pleasure to work with, patiently sorting and selecting material and carefully identifying the characters — some famous or notorious, others now obscure — captured in his iconic images. Several of them, and many more, populate the current exhibition. Their habitat ranges from the Cedar Bar, the Club, the Living Theater, the White Horse Tavern and Café Wha? to Judson Church, the Factory and the Stonewall Inn, as well as the anti-war rallies, be-ins, Happenings and demonstrations that mark the Village as a legendary locus of political, social and artistic ferment.

Fred never claimed that he was making art, but it can’t be denied that some of his images rise above reportage. Jack Kerouac’s impassioned reading from “On the Road,” gesturing as if to embrace the whole audience, illuminates a dingy loft more brightly than the glaring light bulb overhead. A performance by the Velvet Underground casts the band as stark silhouettes against a projection of the singer Nico’s eye — an appropriately surreal backdrop for their visionary music. And a shot of a gay power rally, in which a banner obscures the marchers’ faces, turns their singular embraces into universal gestures. There are also outstanding portraits of individuals, among them a gleeful Yayoi Kusama flashing her trademark dots; a trenchcoated Robert Rauschenberg lurking in an alley; Andy Warhol photographing Fred, as if each inveterate shutterbug were winking at the other; a grizzled Robert Moses, whose plan for a lower Manhattan expressway prompted bitter and ultimately successful opposition by Village denizens; Allen Ginsberg in an Uncle Sam hat, patriotically protesting the Vietnam War; and Bob Dylan earnestly saluting the camera. No doubt about it, Fred was in the right places at the right times, even as the times they were a-changin’.

I have always had a problem with portion control, especially when it comes to homemade cookies. For years, I counted on my children and my husband to eat most of what I baked, so I wouldn’t be tempted to finish every last cookie that came out of the oven.

Now, my older daughter is at college, my younger daughter prefers the carob-dipped rice cakes at Provisions, and my husband has informed me that he intends to live to 100 by forgoing sugar for the next 50 years. It’s going to be all or nothing from now on, I thought, getting ready to bake two dozen cookies just for myself.

Then I noticed an intriguing category of recipes trending online: A single cookie, microwaved in a cup.

I’ve never been a fan of microwave baking, for a couple of reasons. Because the microwave heats cookie dough from the inside out, you don’t get the nice browning and crisp crust that you get in the oven, where cookies bake from the outside in. For the same reason, cookie dough is easily over-baked in the microwave. By the time the outsides of your microwave-baked cookies are dry, the insides are over-done. As these cookies cool, they will become rock-hard and instantly stale.

But when you are talking about just a single cookie, these problems disappear. Since you eat the cookie straight from the microwave and while it is still warm, it doesn’t have the chance to cool off and harden. What you give up in crispy crust, you gain in pudding-like softness and warmth.

There is also the instant gratification factor. Five minutes from the time you decide you need a microwave cookie, you will be scraping the sides of the mug with your spoon. And think about clean-up—or lack thereof. Just rinse out your mug and put it in the dishwasher. The dangerous thing about this technique is that it is so quick, easy, and satisfying that you may find yourself making several microwave cookies in a row.

If that’s what happens, you don’t have to make the same recipe over and over again. The basic formula is endlessly variable. Pick your favorite:

I have to laugh, looking at this long list of ingredients going into one brownie! My intention wasn’t to complicate the recipe. I just couldn’t stop throwing in tablespoonfuls of what I had sitting around in the pantry. Edit out the espresso powder, Heath Bar Bits, and nuts and you have a simpler brownie.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

3 tablespoons sugar

Pinch salt

½ teaspoon instant espresso powder

¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 egg yolk

¼ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon semisweet chocolate chips or chunks

1 tablespoon Heath Bar Bits

1 tablespoon chopped walnuts

1. In a microwave-safe mug, microwave the butter until almost melted, about 30 seconds. Stir until smooth.

2. Stir the cocoa powder, sugar, espresso powder, salt, and vanilla into the butter mixture. Stir in the egg yolk. Stir in the flour. Stir in the chocolate chips, Heath Bar Bits, and nuts.

3. Return the mug to the microwave and microwave until just baked around the edges and still soft in the center, 45 seconds to 1 minute. Do not overbake.

Marchesa’s Keren Craig and Georgina Chapman infuse some nomad chic into their brand of glamour in a wallet friendly fusion collection.

Known for their jaw-dropping red-carpet stunners, Keren Craig and Georgina Chapman, the duo behind the glamorous fashion brand Marchesa, are shifting gears a bit these days. Marchesa Voyage is a contemporary sportswear collection with a global point of view that raises the bar on the jet-setter’s wardrobe. We sat down with Craig to learn the ins and outs of unceremonious glamour the Marchesa way.

In five words Marchesa Voyage is…

Seasonless, embellished, happy, exotic and effortless.

Mixing Marchesa and Marchesa Voyage: OK or faux pas?

Georgina and I felt very strongly about creating a collection for a customer who appreciates what we do at Marchesa, but didn’t want to spend $5,000 on a cocktail dress. But, if you do shop both lines, you should absolutely mix and match. We always saw Marchesa as a full lifestyle brand, so our girl wears Voyage during the day, and then she changes into Marchesa at night.

Can we expect to see an all-encompassing Marchesa lifestyle brand soon?

Well, we launched our perfume [in 2012], which was very exciting. The future is bright, but I think, for us, it’s really about focusing on the new divisions that we’ve started. We’ve grown very slowly, although it may feel like it all happened quite quickly. Georgina and I plan to spend a lot of time on Marchesa Voyage. It’s paramount to get the details of the core of who we are as a brand and what we want to portray to the world. We’re making sure that we get those right before we can start talking Marchesa pillows and home scents.

Speaking of your partner, your individual styles are very different. You veer on the side of bohemian, and Georgina is all about the sparkle. How does that work out when it comes to collaborating?

We might like different things for our personal wardrobe, but if you put us in a room with 1,000 dresses, we would gravitate toward the same five. I’m a textile designer, so I’ll design the embellishments, the print, fabrics and so on. Georgina takes on the silhouette of the garment and its draping. We both have our own specific roles, and the partnership just works very well.

Would you say there is synergy between the Voyage line and Hampton fashionistas?

Voyage is resoundingly well suited for this area. I think it’s in keeping with the Hampton lifestyle. The whole idea behind Marchesa is about a global traveler and the relaxed lifestyle. It’s about the woman who is either getting on the plane to go places or is living the life of a traveler at home. I’ve met plenty of women like that here.

Do you see a freestanding store in the Hamptons one day?

Are you kidding? We would absolutely love to have a shop in here. This area has been very good to us. Ever since we started Marchesa we’ve been coming to show our collection here. It’s a great dynamic… so much fun. If we had a store here, it’d give me an excuse to come out here all the time.

So I finally have taken the first two steps to being a good gardener. Yes, I know, it’s a little late after gardening at my home for over 15 years, but hey, don’t judge me lest you be judged yourself.

Anyway, I finally bit the bullet and added compost or mulch to every single planting bed on the entire property, including all four perimeter hedging beds. And I finally tested my soil.

Of course, I put the compost down after taking the soil tests, so now I have to test the compost to see what that has added, but it’s a good first two steps. I was lucky enough to get the soil samples taken and the compost down before the big snow and the arctic weather we’ve had this past month, so perhaps my plants will have survived this winter.

It’s only 42 days until spring, which seems crazy, but I was totally loving my relaxing time in front of the fire, reading all my gardening magazines that had piled up over the year, and burrowing deeply into the garden books that arrived as presents to myself all year long. It was heaven.

Then I got my soil sample report.

Boron deficiency everywhere but in the bed that was a huge pile of compost where it’s too high? Manganese deficiency across the whole place? Zinc from a very low 2.6 where the black pussy willow lives to a very high 59.8, where the old apples reside. Phosphorus levels from 52 where one dachshund is nosing around to 240 where the other one is rolling in chicken poop. Potassium from a very low 52 in the back yard to a high 294 in the front yard. It’s crazy. In fact, I’m going to have to make a map of the property just to try and figure it all out.

Some of it should be simple to correct, although of course things like the Ph ranging from 5.2 to 6.5 with the lilacs in the most acidic soil on the property and the magnolia in the most alkaline is embarrassing. Embarrassing, and I feel so sad for my plants, but I know what to do, I know how to acidify or alkalinize soil. What I don’t know how to do is to deal with a boron deficiency. Apparently the treatment is to buy 20 Mule Team laundry detergent and fling it about at a rate of 1/3 of a lb per 1,000 feet but to also be super careful, because boron toxicity is something your soil never recovers from. So much fun, especially since we all know I’m not good with being careful.

Luckily I had Fred from Bartlett Tree do my soil testing, and he is going to help me with the boron so I don’t toxify my whole property. It was actually his idea to make the map and as soon as I talk one of the guys from Marders into printing my property from Google Earth out on the big printer I’m going to go crazy marking it. It’s actually sort of exciting to see how utterly different it is from each bed to another. Exciting and confusing.

There are things I’ve puzzled out, like the copper is high because of the apple trees that have lived here longer then I have. Maybe these apple trees were treated with a Bordeaux spray fungicide – it’s an organic fungicide, even though copper is a heavy metal. And most of the high copper numbers are in the front yard where the fruit trees live, but then why so high in the way back east side of the property and not on the way back west side of the property? The two spots are only about 100 feet apart, it makes no sense.

Based on this report, I’m sad to say that obviously it’s not working with me throwing around handfuls of fertilizer each spring based on the hydrangeas and the evergreens getting Holly-tone and everyone else getting Plant-tone. Instead I need to really pay attention to what’s getting what. I need a plan. And I need a map.

I do not need to use a fertilizer with phosphorus in the ex-compost bed, but that bed sure needs manganese chelate and potassium sulfate. Meanwhile the bed with the Chinese elm needs Epson salts for its magnesium deficiency. Plus I’ve got conflicting information. I didn’t know my blackberries and my magnolia wanted the soil to be as acidic as they did, but I do know that the rhododendron is dying in the bed that is the right acidity and the redbud (in that same bed) that wants it much more alkaline is thriving like nothing else in the garden.

I will now confess that I also knew that they shouldn’t be in the same bed together, but when I was placing them, they just looked so nice, the dark leaves of the Forest pansy redbud picking up the purple flower tresses of Edith Bosley, that I did it anyway. Bad gardener!

I’m actually fairly proud of myself for finally doing the right thing this winter. Getting all that compost and mulch spread on every single bed was hideously hard, and cost a lot of money I would have much preferred to spend on more plants, but I knew the soil fertility was terrible, and I knew I was torturing the plants I was stuffing all over the place. Getting the soil tested so I could actually really get the plants I have healthier before buying more, well that’s just a really mature thing to do. It is in fact one of the first things I always tell clients to do. Most of the time clients, like me ignore the advice.

I tell them, “Don’t guess, just get a soil test.” It’s not something I made up, but it’s a sweet little rhyming piece of advice that if I’d followed earlier but have helped save a lot of little plant lives. And now I have the perfect little story to tell them about how I, too, ignored my own advice and am sorry to have done so. A perfect example of why you should do what I say, and not what I do, but then that applies to almost everything I do in life.

Paige Patterson wants to walk down the road and cut branches from her neighbor’s pussy willow, but knows it’s stealing. It’s just so tempting.

Always one to buck the trends, these days I am adding more wheat to my diet while other people are going gluten-free. This morning, I cooked some wheat berries, mixed in a little sautéed apple, sprinkled my cereal with pomegranate seeds and walnuts, and topped everything off with plain yogurt. I dare you to say that this wheat-based bowl of superfoods is bad for me!

Gluten is a protein found in wheat as well as rye and barley. There are people out there who should be concerned about eating any grain containing gluten. About 1 percent of the general population has celiac disease, an inherited autoimmune disorder that causes the body to attack the small intestine in response to gluten consumption. For these people, even a bite of something with a small quantity of wheat can trigger this response. Additionally, about 6 percent of the general population shows symptoms of gluten sensitivity, a similar but less severe condition in which an immune response to gluten triggers symptoms but not the long-term damage to the small intestine that can result in untreated celiac disease.

For the rest of us, eating wheat is only a problem in that we eat too many servings of processed white bread at the expense of fruits, vegetables, and healthy whole grains. If bagels, doughnuts, and muffins dominate your diet to the extent that you have no room for anything else, you may be missing out on important nutrients as well as healthy fiber. Instead of cutting out all wheat products, why not eat wheat in a less processed and more nutritious form, and one that tastes great when combined with other whole foods?

Wheat berries are as whole as you can get. They are entire wheat kernels, unprocessed except for the removal of their tough hulls. Milled, they become whole wheat flour. White flour is whole wheat flour minus the bran (which contains wheat’s fiber) and germ (which contains healthy oils and other nutrients). Wheat berries have a nutty flavor that is equally welcome in savory and lightly sweetened dishes. Cook them like pasta, in lightly salted water. Depending on how old and dry they are, they will take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to soften up.

Drained, they can be combined with whatever you like. For my breakfast bowl, I added some flavenoid- and phytonutrient-rich apple to help regulate my blood sugar. I threw in some pomegranate seeds for their cancer-fighting antioxidants. Walnuts provide plenty of Vitamin E for vascular health. And yogurt has calcium plus those probiotics for healthy immune and digestive systems. But really, I just liked the combination of flavors, textures, and colors that these add-ons gave me. What a cheerful way to start the day.

One of the most delightful things about my breakfast was the fact that the wheat berries were grown nearby, at Quail Hill Community Farm. I took home my full share this summer, and froze whatever I didn’t eat. Now I have enough wheat berries for many warming winter breakfasts. If you didn’t stockpile local wheat berries from Quail Hill or from Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett (where CSA members received them during the summer and they were sold at local farm markets), you can buy them at any supermarket or natural foods store.

Wheat Berries for Breakfast

Makes 4 servings

You can boil your wheat berries up to 3 days before eating, drain and refrigerate them in an airtight container until ready to use. Other cooked grains may be substituted for the wheat berries, including quinoa, couscous, barley and bulgur.

1. Add the wheat berries to a pot and cook over medium heat, stirring, until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add water to cover and salt, bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer until soft but not mushy, about 20 minutes for fresh berries, 40 to 60 minutes for store-bought berries. Drain and transfer to a large bowl.

2. Heat the butter over medium-high heat in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the apple slices and cook, stirring, until they just begin to soften, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the wheat berries and maple syrup and cook, stirring, until heated through.

3. Portion the wheat berries into bowls, top each bowl with ¼ cup of yogurt, sprinkle with pomegranate seeds and walnut pieces, and serve immediately with more maple syrup on the side.

Perhaps you too have spent the last couple of days digging through your car sorting out all the different tools and gloves and garden stakes that are really not necessary at this time of year, and perhaps you too, like me, discovered 11 different little garden journals and sat down to read through them all. And you too encountered your own set of garden lists.

I love making lists. It’s one of those things I truly excel at. And I am brilliant at always having a notebook nearby, something I’m rather proud of. I do, however, seem to have too many notebooks –but isn’t that what winter is for – the reading and adding to of the notebooks?

Hopefully, you all got garden journals for Christmas. I have given up on my family, and now just buy my own each year; so don’t feel bad if you didn’t, but every gardener needs a couple little notebooks nearby just in case you have to jot something down the next time you are in a nursery or a garden or reading a gardening book. Or like I, you can also start keeping notes on your iPhone – I’m feeling quite clever about that. I have notebooks in my car and in my bags and in my coat pockets and in my husband’s glove compartment, because one never knows when you will see something, or realize something, or experience something and you will need to make a note.

It’s like garden photography, I wish I would bring my camera with me and take more photographs, I grab some on my iphone, but it’s never the same.

Anyway, when you record something, it stays with you, if not in memory, it least on the pages and, in the last day of the year when you’re sitting by the fire leafing through your notes or photographs, you will be inspired all over again.

It appears that although I don’t really remember anything any longer – I am almost always surprised by the insightful notes I’ve made over the year – I am pleased to see that I am consistent. I have written down the same notes in a number of my 11 notebooks. And yes, although I did remember wanting to invest in more nepeta for 2014, I have lots of other brilliant plant combinations and ideas I’d totally forgotten. Of course I need more ferns, why wasn’t I looking for those on sale in the fall? And I completely forgot that I wanted to put variegated Solomon Seal in the magnolia bed, and there was tons of it available in October at good prices. I also forgot I was going to grab a sale edgeworthia in the fall from Fort Pond Native Plants, as well as a couple more Orange Rocket barberry from anyone who had any since they’ve been declared an invasive species and will be illegal on Long Island come spring. Sigh.

Some of my notebooks are actually home to thoughts and random jottings over several years so I also can track the roller coaster of my enthusiasms. I can see when I was really jazzed about adding more native plants, and when I was so excited to have a deer fence that all I wanted to do was invest heavily in deciduous azaleas. I always love lady’s mantle, it’s in all my journals every year, but my tulip wish lists are getting longer and longer each season and one can see whenever I’ve been reading English books and blogs, because there are tallies of varieties that you can’t find on this side of the Atlantic.

I have a personal vendetta against Saran Raven as she does this to me all the time, blogging about and offering for sale varieties I just can’t get my hands on. Hideous lady.

I actually do think I want to revisit the deciduous azalea idea, especially in the back forty where I’ve snuck in a few more beds. Wouldn’t you know I just planted a mass of winterberry (ilex verticillata) back there? It’s an item that has lived in my notebooks for at least 10 years, especially whenever I start thinking native plants. And since the winterberries aren’t that interesting until the fall, they need a showy spring companion, how perfect. Oh course, I hope the compost we threw down in thick piles just last week will have suffocated the weeds by spring. We got all the beds cleaned before the snow came but not everything got compost. I know that I’ve preached about leaving the leaf litter in the beds for the fall, but this spring was such a nightmare when it came time to try and remove the soggy mass without hurting the tulips, that I’ve caved in and cleaned them all out again. This means huge leaf piles, good for next year’s compost, but I’m worried about the bulbs and hellebore flowers that were poking up before this pile of snow fell.

Which takes us back to the lists I’ve found in my notebooks. It seems that there are, still, according to my notes, quite a few hellebores I “have to have.” Their names are sandwiched between lists of snowdrops I want and phlox I lust after, and below a scribble that reads, “How does one salt dry herbs?” A large section in two different notebooks explores various combinations of golden foliaged plants inspired by the book, “Louis Benech: Twelve French Gardens,” which was definitely one of my favorites this year. There is also a boldly unlined statement, “2014 will be the year of the euphorbias” that rides high over a list of varieties that I have no recollection of writing nor wanting. Another note reminds me to put fertilizer in with the garlic when I plant it this year, a good thought that I did not remember at garlic planting time, but oh well. And finally, after a note that the talented English garden designer Arne Maynard uses hazel sticks to stake with and that we should stock them at Marders, comes another plea for Salix elaeagnos, the rosemary willow I’ve been searching for in a decent size, for ages. I’m just going to have to cave in and get a little mail order one – if I had done so when I first started lusting after the thing it would have grown up to be large already. Silly me.

Paige Patterson’s husband just found her locally raised Northern Bobwhite!

The aim of “Art From the Ground Up,” a symposium sponsored by the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center at Stony Brook Manhattan last Friday, was to examine the authentication tool kit, which includes time-honored perceptive skills, diligent research, traditional forensics and the latest technology. If a work of art lacks undisputed bona fides, it has to be examined and approved by reputable authorities — connoisseurs, materials analysts and provenance investigators. To explain that process, I invited five of them to share their insights with an audience that included museum professionals, art collectors, and representatives of artists’ foundations and catalogue raisonné projects, who have a vested interest in protecting their assets from corruption.

Fakes and forgeries have been much in the news of late, most prominently in the ongoing drama of Knoedler & Company’s spectacular meltdown. (The venerable gallery, established in 1857, was forced to close when much of its inventory of modern masterpieces turned out to be counterfeits painted to order by a Chinese immigrant.) Patricia Cohen, who was awarded a 2013 Annette Giacometti Prize for her in-depth investigative reporting, covered the story in The New York Times. She gave the symposium’s closing remarks, which stressed the point that journalists, operating under various constraints, often can’t do justice to the nuances.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the New York Post’s coverage of the crime-scene style examination of a painting that belonged to the late Ruth Kligman, whose five-month fling with Jackson Pollock is vividly described in her 1974 memoir, Love Affair. The presentation by Colette Loll Marvin, a researcher who is helping her estate (Kligman died in 2010) validate her claim that the painting is by Pollock, illustrated the forensic work of Nicholas Petraco, a retired New York City police detective and respected trace evidence analyst. Petraco, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, examined foreign matter found in the painting and compared it to samples taken at and around the Pollock-Krasner House. He found enough matches — including grass seeds, sand grains, wool fibers and, of all things, a polar bear hair stuck in the paint that matches hair from a rug in the house — to conclude that the work was painted there. Unfortunately all this fascinating detective work doesn’t establish who painted it.

Authentication, as the symposium’s presenters reminded us more than once, involves connoisseurship, provenance and materials analysis, for which the standard analogy is a three-legged stool. If any leg is broken, the stool can’t stand. In the Kligman case, one leg now appears solid, while another is shaky and the third is missing. The only provenance is Kligman’s word, which is naturally suspect. What’s missing is acceptance by the connoisseurs. In the early 1990s, when Kligman submitted the painting to the Pollock-Krasner authentication board, the experts couldn’t reach a firm conclusion. They offered to include it in a supplement to the Pollock catalogue raisonné — the documentation of his known work — with the proviso that more research was needed. That left the door open to future authentication, but Kligman refused. She wanted the unequivocal approval of the board, which was disbanded when the supplement was published.

For whatever reason, the Post story and its subsequent spinoffs didn’t include this information, which Marvin discussed. Instead it was falsely reported that Pollock’s widow, Lee Krasner, personally rejected the painting out of spite, and that the board later refused to recognize it because they were “Krasner’s pals.” On the contrary, Krasner never even considered it, since it wasn’t submitted until after she died, and the board did acknowledge it, albeit with reservations. Apart from its obscure history — until 1999 Kligman neglected to mention it in her otherwise detailed account of virtually every moment of her liaison with Pollock — a major stumbling block is that, in the words of the eminent scholar and authentication board member Francis O’Connor, “I don’t think there’s any expert in the world that would look at that piece and say it’s a Pollock.”

So although the painting has failed the three-legged-stool exam, the headlines blare, “CSI tests authenticate Pollock’s final work,” and “Mistress Proved Right.” As with many such disputes, time, and the art market, will decide the merits of that claim.